Timelines soon as ministries fail to act on reforms

ET Bureau|

Oct 15, 2012, 05.18 AM IST

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NEW DELHI: The government is set to expedite action on creating a transparent system of allocating natural resources, a move that comes amid dithering by ministries that continue to stall the reform urged by Congress president Sonia Gandhi nearly two years ago.

Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth has summoned secretaries of ministries early next month to a meeting of a new monitoring panel constituted under his leadership to keep tabs on the progress being made by the ministries to clean up the resource allocation systems under their domain. The committee includes top officials from the ministries of finance, petroleum and natural gas, commerce, environment and forests, telecom, mines, water resources, land resources and urban development.

"The first meeting of the monitoring committee was scheduled on September 18. But it was deferred due to some exigencies," a senior cabinet secretariat official told ET, adding that the meeting is now scheduled for November 8.

Seth's intervention comes after the finance ministry's department of economic affairs informed the Cabinet Secretariat that only three ministries had set targets for implementing the recommendations of the Ashok Chawla Committee on Allocation of Natural Resources.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had directed all ministries in May to speedily pursue 69 "acceptable" recommendations out of the 81 made by the committee to bring in transparency in the allocation of natural resources such as land, spectrum and minerals. Eleven other critical recommendations for curbing graft in coal, petroleum, gas and land allocations were kept on hold due to the refusal of the ministries to accept them.

But by mid-September, just the ministries of mines and water resources had begun working in earnest towards implementing even the acceptable recommendations. Since then, just the urban development ministry has sent in an action plan for cleaning up resource locations.

Moreover, separate committees of secretaries examining the 11 contentious recommendations are yet to achieve any resolution.

At the Congress plenary session in 2010, Gandhi had endorsed the creation of an open, competitive system of exploiting natural resources as "something we promised in our 2009 election manifesto" and has "now assumed much greater urgency".

A senior official in one of the ministries stalling the recommendations, however, conceded to ET that the strategy is to "let the issue linger till it is forgotten".

But Seth is expected to inform the secretaries that the new monitoring committee will draw up the time schedule for implementing the approved recommendations since the ministries had failed to act. The replies of the three ministries that have responded to the request for drawing up implementation timelines will also be discussed at the meeting.

The official, who did not wish to be named, also said the department of economic affairs was taking necessary action for finalising the remaining 11 recommendations in consultation with the ministries concerned.

The official didn't respond to a query on whether the government planned to put in the public domain the Ashok Chawla committee's report, which was submitted to the government in June 2011.

According to the government's chief economic advisor Raghuram Rajan, fair allotment of resources is critical to restore investors' confidence and regain India's growth momentum. "The Ashok Chawla committee report, which has argued that by and large most natural resources should be auctioned is a good starting point," Rajan had said last fortnight, "If we don't do (auctions), explain why and under what circumstances. That kind of transparency will start bringing more confidence, not just in the government, but also in the private sector and allow us to regain the pace of growth."

Though the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance had been in the dock for opaque allocations of telecom spectrum, the government sprung into action only after Gandhi's clarion call on corruption. It set up a group of ministers to suggest measures to tackle corruption. The GoM sought recommendations from two expert panels on public procurement and allocation of natural resources - two areas that throw up the most graft opportunities. The GoM has submitted two reports to the prime minister, including the 69 acceptable reforms in the allocation of natural resources.

The challenge for Seth is to ensure that ministries follow through with meaningful reforms in resource allocations, unlike the browbeating by ministries on disclosing their discretionary powers.

"We have ample evidence that all discretionary powers, particularly in land allocation breed corruption," Gandhi had said at the plenary, "I would like all Congress chief ministers and ministers at both the Centre and states, to set an example by reviewing and relinquishing such powers."

The government has accepted the GoM's suggestion to formulate and place in the public domain regulatory parameters for the exercise of discretionary powers by ministers. But as reported by ET in February, most ministries claimed that they actually had no discretionary powers to speak of.

A release issued by the prime minister's office on July 24 about the anti-corruption steps initiated by the UPA was curiously silent on the allocation of natural resources.